Tag Archives: Faculty

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5 Challenges with faculty and data strategy

In today’s accountability climate, institutional leaders create and rely on data- driven decisions to promote the success of their institutions. Much of this data collection is delegated to internal stakeholders, such as faculty members, to obtain and systematically report. I along with two graduate students have a new book chapter coming out on the faculty perspectives on the use of data in higher education. In today’s post, I want to share what we see as the five challenges facing higher education in the area of faculty and data strategy.

Photo credit: David Stewart
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Types of Academic Service for Faculty

There are two primary ways to categorize types of faculty service (Fear & Sandmann, 1995; O’Meara, Terosky, & Neumann, 2008; Ward, 2003). First, there are service activities that take place on campus at the departmental, school, or institutional level. These local activities tend to focus on operations necessary to getting things done on campus. Second, professional service activities include those with professional organizations, scholarly journals, and other activities that support the work of the discipline. In today’s post, I want to share the two types of service that are critical for higher education and playing the important role as academic citizen.

 

Types of Academic Service for Faculty

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Academic writing tips from Stephen King

One of my favorite things to do to improve my writing is to read books on writing. I particularly try to read about writing when I’m struggling with it. Lately, I’ve been transitioning between two large writing projects and my writing has suffered as a result. To help get my writing chops back, I re-read Stephen King’s wonderful book “On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft.” In his unique style, King packs a tremendous amount of writing advice in a couple of hundred pages. For today’s post, I want to share academic writing tips from Stephen King that will help you get your writing going again too.

Photo credit: Stephanie Lawton



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Why I assign term papers

In an essay for InsideHigherEd, Deborah Cohan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina at Beaufort, makes the case for why she does not assign term papers to her students. Cohan contends that the term or research paper does not allow students to sufficiently develop their own voice or connect ideas. I found myself agreeing with her stated goals for writing assignments, but coming to dramatically different conclusions. In fact, in my own classes, I only assign research papers in an attempt to meet the goals Cohan seeks. In today’s post, I want to discuss why I assign term papers, my take on Cohan’s essay, and why I believe her goals of writing are right although her conclusions on research papers are wrong.

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The tenure decision process

The tenure decision process varies across institutions. All colleges and universities value teaching, scholarship, and service in slightly different ways and the tenure decision process is built upon institutional culture, nuance, and sheer historical quirks. While there is no way to fully describe all of the variations that exist in the tenure decision process, today’s post will describe the broad parameters and levels of review that exist at most colleges and universities.

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At most institutions, there are three basic levels of review:  department, college/school, and institution. Again, each institution is different, but I suspect these 3 levels exist at the vast majority of colleges and universities in the United States.